


a simple man

by vrokroa



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It, Friendship, Gen, Mandalorians (Star Wars), Maybe - Freeform, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post Season 2, The Mandalorian (TV) Season 2 Spoilers, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-13 11:22:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29525670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vrokroa/pseuds/vrokroa
Summary: Din didn't know how he had gotten here, or what had caused the strange gap in his memories but he was beginning to realise that something had happened to him between picking up that bounty and waking up on the pirate ship. to make things even more complicated the stranger who had found him was not helping at all. There was something oddly familiar about him that Din just couldn't place.He just wanted to get back to Nevarro.
Relationships: Din Djarin & Jango Fett
Comments: 21
Kudos: 111





	1. Chapter 1

“Hey, wake up.”

Din spasmed, blinking away the crust around his eyes and shoving away the hand on his shoulder. His blaster was in his hand and he pointed it towards the threat, squinting through the dim light of his HUD; it was then he noticed something had been dislodged.

The shadowed figure drew back, holding their hands up beside their head. Din took the moment to look around, pausing when he saw slumped bodies and puddles of something that might have been blood. The last thing he remembered was… he couldn’t remember.

“Your head okay?” It was the person that had woken him up, he sounded oddly familiar… Fett? It couldn’t be. “Bucket took quite a hit.”

He could feel something seeping down the back of his neck, blood?. As if the words brought it into existence he could feel a sudden deep throbbing at the back of his skull. He hadn’t felt anything like it since the Dark Trooper on Gideon’s cruiser.

“Pain.” His mouth was thick, tongue laden with something disgusting. He hunched over himself and coughed, grimacing when shooting pains erupted from his lungs. That was new. “Where…”

“Pirate ship, they dragged you aboard around an hour ago, you took them out when they tried to take your helmet off. Took a few hits though, suppose you don’t remember what happened?”

Din shook his head, hissing when it exasperated the pain even worse. 

“You injured?” Their voice was nagging at something in the back of his mind and he didn’t know  _ what  _ it was. He tilted his head to look down at his body, beskar splattered with dried blood. He could  _ feel _ pain somewhere, he just didn’t know exactly where it was coming from.

“Probably,” He wheezed, doing his best to push himself up against the wall and get his feet under him. His companion held out what Din assumed was a hand, stopping just out of range from him. Din tilted his head forward and reached out to grab it, letting the other being pull him up onto his feet when he was about to fall back down.

“Where’s the rest of the crew?” 

The human, he was pretty sure they were human, turned to him before gesturing to the bodies on the floor. 

Din got the hint.

“Oh.” 

“Wanted to do it myself, you were quicker.” They pulled Din’s arm over their shoulder, not making any sound of protest when Din ended up putting all of his weight onto the contact point.

“Sorry.” He had taken their kill. Din felt a crushing sensation of guilt and embarrassment. He hadn’t screwed up like this since he was young. The other was probably doing a long con operation, setting up a strike to take down the pirates and he had ruined that. So kriffing idiotic-

“No debt.” The man, Din was guessing that they were a man but he didn’t assume, “They deserved what they got.” And that was it. 

Something was bugging him and he couldn’t place it. 

“The lights are off.”

“Something happened which knocked them out and took us out of hyperspace. I was going to head to the cockpit to see if we could get this rust bucket back up and running again but I had to keep you supervised.”

“Sorry.” Din seemed to be saying that a lot. He turned his head best he could to look at his… saviour? But he couldn’t see a thing other than shadowed features. He had tried this before, he remembered. The injuries must have been getting to him more than he thought.

They just grunted, leaning Din against a wall so that they could pull a door open, leading to more shadowed corridors. It was endless. Din acquiesced as they pulled him back onto their shoulder again, stumbling through the darkness until they came across a sealed blast door. 

Din did his best to stand up straight as the other man went to fiddle with the door panel, unable to stop himself from swaying slightly on his feet. He ended up leaning against the wall in defeat, letting out a sigh as the tremors in his legs abated ever so slightly.

“You got anything on you I can use to get this thing open?”

Din took a moment to process what they had said before he moved to rummage through his pouches. 

“I have a vibroknife.”

“Could work,” Squinting, Din did his best to discern whether that was their hand or a figment of his imagination. It was their hand outstretched towards him. That was good. He leaned against the wall a bit more firmly and let himself slide down slowly, wincing at the screech of beskar against durasteel. He managed to fish the knife from his boot and handed it over to the man hilt first.

It was taken from him slowly, an audible shift of fabric telling him that they had turned back to their attempts at unlocking the door. Din shimmied his way back up the wall until he was standing straight again. 

The man let out a small sound of satisfaction, and a moment later the doors slid open. Illuminated by dull starlight, Din could see them turn back to him and hand the knife back over. He nodded and took it back, holding it for a moment before tucking it into his belt. 

He would put it back in his boot when he wasn’t about to pass out.

Saviour stepped into the cockpit and looked around before seating himself into the pilot’s chair, busying himself with the navicomputer and whatever else was stopping them from going back into hyperspace.

There it was again. The nagging feeling of familiarity. Din put it off to his concussion.

“Come over here.”

Din walked slowly, more of a shuffle than actual footsteps. He leaned over the chair to look at what seemed to be a zoomed-in depiction of where they were. Din vaguely knew that sector.

“You know where the nearest non-hostile port is?” They asked, turning up to face him, “I’m not familiar with these planets.”

He tilted his head and reached to zoom the display out, “This is the Triellus Trade Route,” he pointed to the left edge of the screen, “We’re drifting some way out into the Jubilar Sector, not that far from Jubilar itself. An odd place to be for pirates.”

The man hummed, tapping his fingers rhythmically against the dashboard. “We’re lucky that we have some amount of fuel left, but not much. Will only take us a sector or two until it runs out.”

Din stepped back and took a minute to push back the haziness that was beginning to settle into his mind. There were a few planets nearby that he could think of that  _ might _ be safe to land on. They were far too close to Hutt space to be certain though.

“Got any credits?”

They looked at him for a moment before turning back to the flickering display, “Possibly. We could always pick up a job.”

We? Din took a moment to try and look closer at the man to discern if they were kidding or not, but he couldn’t quite make it out.

“You are also a bounty hunter?” He asked. 

“Of sorts.” They didn’t elaborate further.

Din sighed before leaning over the seat again, bracing one hand on it as he adjusted the navicomputer with the other. “Saleucami might suit our needs.” They nodded and began the hyperspace calculations, cursing under their breath as the screen shorted out before slowly booting back up, losing their progress. 

“This might take time, could you check around to see if we have any errors or malfunctions coming up?” Din, not wanting to risk another wave of pain but still wanting to affirm the request, tapped a response on the back of their chair. 

He didn’t think much of the action as he was shuffling through the cockpit and into the corridor, thankfully now with the emergency lights on, more concerned with reattaching wires and soldering together sparking pieces of electronics. Thankfully the pain he was feeling was easy to compartmentalise away, leaving him able to focus on the task ahead.

When he couldn’t find anything else to fix, Din went back to the cockpit to check on the stranger. He hovered behind the seats, alternating his weight on either foot in an attempt to subside his anxious energy.

“I’ve fixed as much as I can.”

“Good, I’ve managed to get us a clear route to Saleucami.” Din nodded, looking at the instruments for a moment before shuffling around the other seat so that he could sit down. “It’ll be a day or two until we get there.”

“Do we have the supplies to keep us going that long?”

“Rations.” Exciting. 

They didn’t speak much after that, focusing more on turning the ship around and keeping it stable while they initiated the hyperdrive sequence. Din took the moment to allow himself to minutely relax, pressing his head against the edge of the seat to try and push the pain away again. 

Did he have any bacta hypos? Pulling his head from its spot was agony but he managed to do it, letting his head slump on his shoulder as he rummaged through his pouches again. An eternity later he managed to fish one out, gripping it tightly as it almost fell from his shaky hand.

He was faced with his next blockade then. Risk-taking his armour off in front of a stranger who could take this moment to kill him while he’s vulnerable, or try to stumble to a different part of the ship without collapsing. 

“I’ll be back.” His companion got up and left the cockpit. That was… unexpected. It seemed his problem had been solved. Not wasting time, he undid some of the fastenings holding his armour and flight suit together and quickly administered the bacta into his arm, wincing at the pain of the needle retreating.

He sat back and let it do its work, slowly putting his armour back on. He was going to need more to fully patch himself up but it would give him enough time until they got to Saleucami. 

His head slowly began to clear up, the hazy pain that had taken root slowly fading until he was left alone with his thoughts. Still no closer to figuring out how he had ended up on a pirate ship far from where he remembered himself to be last.

He had been on Nevarro, stocking up for a hunt that Karga had given him, it was a simple thing, catch and return. Why couldn’t he remember anything from after that point?

A while later the door opened again, Din turned around to see the man holding a blaster, two more pistols holstered at his waist. He froze, tensing up as they walked up to where he was sitting. But he didn’t lift it to shoot him, he just leaned it against Din’s seat and went back to theirs. 

He didn’t let his guard down just yet, watching them from the peripheral of his helmet. They made no moves against him, more preoccupied with either looking out the viewport to the stars passing them by or adjusting one instrument or another.

“Satisfied?” Din blinked, watching as the man turned to look towards him, the glow from the navicomputer lighting up his face with a dim glow. He was still frustratingly familiar, he knew he had seen that face before but he just couldn’t place it.

“With?” 

“Your assessment of me. No doubt you’re calculating the risks of me turning on you.”

Din shifted, giving the man a faint shrug of his shoulders in place of an answer. They nodded, before kicking their feet up onto the control board and going to sleep. He blinked, watching them for another minute before turning back to the viewport.

He shuffled until he was more comfortable on the seat and settled himself for hours of monotony, he didn’t want to risk sleeping in case his concussion wasn’t healed by the bacta.

He would get back on his feet, find some way back to Tatooine or Nevarro and be done with it. Hopefully, Fett wouldn’t mind Din dropping in on his budding empire.


	2. Chapter 2

Saleucami was dull, dusty and dry. Warm too, Din vaguely remembered something about the cause of it being geothermal outputs but he didn’t care much beyond the discomfort it caused him. 

His companion had managed to find new clothes from somewhere, covering up until all that could be seen of his face were shadowed eyes. Din followed behind him as they left the smoking ship behind, hidden in the forest a few kilometres from the capital city.

They made short work of the trek, most encounters or opportuning marauders dissuaded by the weapons they carried. Soon enough they were at the city proper and were sneaking their way past the main entrance to a side one that was well hidden.

The man must have been here before at some point to know of a secret route. The thought nudged something at the back of his mind but he couldn’t recall what it was. Hopefully, they could find more bacta soon.

Once in the city, they set off towards the spaceport, a map module indicating that The Trader’s Belt bordered it, containing the sort of depravities that could hold possible jobs for them. 

They just needed to walk halfway across the city to get there, an act that would get more and more difficult as time went on as Din’s half-healed injuries slowly started to ache again. He couldn’t be certain but from the feel of it, he had broken at least one rib, several cracks at least. Far too severe for a small shot to heal.

His beskar drew a lot of looks, some benign and some covetous, nothing he was unfamiliar with. Even the man, who hadn’t spared it a second glance within the ship, turned towards him to look as stray beams of sunlight broke through the clouds, reflecting against the plates. 

Time slipped past him and he found himself being held back by a hand just before he’d have collided with a closed door. He nodded and fell in line behind the man as they entered the gambling den. A few heads turned but beyond that, they managed to go by unnoticed, taking a seat at a fairly empty table and waiting until a few patrons slowly gathered. 

Credits were placed on the table and cards were dealt out, his companion placing a few at Din’s side to cover the entry fee. They played mostly in silence, the few words exchanged being quiet grumbles of discontent or hums of thought. 

Din had no luck, quickly depleting his stock of credits as he continuously pulled poor cards. He folded while he was ahead, standing back from the table and leaning against the wall. He watched over his companion as they maintained a constant average performance until there were only three players left. Din’s man, a Duros and a Togruta. 

They played for a while before the Duros folded, leaving the table with a huff of breath and a hand on the blaster at their hip. Din watched carefully, inching towards his weapon just in case. But they thought better of it and instead walked off, heading into the smoky haze of the den.

The Togruta and the man went back and forth before the game abruptly ended, the small pile of credits being swept to his companion with a sweep of his hand. The Togruta nodded and placed something Din couldn’t see on the pile and stood up to leave, lekku swaying with the movement. It was then he noticed that one of them was torn off, the nub healed over with scar tissue and pale markings. 

The Togruta whispered something to Din’s companion, face slackening when they said something back Din caught eyes with them for a moment before turning and leaving the same way the Duros had, navigating through the sea of bodies with ease, almost melting into nonexistence.

His companion had stood up by then, jerking his head towards the exit. Din fell into step behind him and blinked as the other patrons kept a gulf of space between them and the rest.

Not unusual for Din to encounter, but not to such an extent.

Night had fallen while they had been inside, yellowed lights casting the streets in a dim glow. His companion jerked his head to the side and led the way until they were sequestered in a dark alley, blasters drawn and held as they hunkered down to look at the disk.

It was dull and scratched but the holo displayed mostly well, only some data degradation at the edges.

“Our target, quick elimination.” The man looked over to Din, the whites of his eyes almost glowing in the darkness, “You squeamish with wet work?”

He shook his head, leaning in to get a closer look at the image. Human, average looking, no distinguishing features. “Is this all we have?”

“He’s on the planet.”

The client was one of _those_ then, “Great.” 

“Pays enough to get us out, then we can get my shit back, I’ve got credits off-world… Lots of them, I’ll pay you handsomely to get me to where I want to go.”

That was… quite an offer. Suspicious and too good to be true.

“How do I know you won’t just run?”

“You don’t.” Pragmatic. More transparent than any client or bounty Din had conversed with before.

“How much are you willing to pay?”

They tilted their head, hands moving to rest in their pockets as they sat down on a crate. “How much do you want?”

“A hundred thousand.” It was a ridiculous amount, but he wanted to establish what the man’s range was before agreeing to too little.

“Done. Let’s go.”

_What?_

They got up from the crate and made to leave the alleyway, turning back to face Din once they were at the main street again.

“We have a hunt to get to, Mando. Hurry up.”

It plagued him as they led the way deeper into the city, so much agreed to in an instant. _A hundred thousand credits_ , enough to get him a ship, almost enough to get one new. He could even start building up his weapon collection again, after Tython he only had the spear from Corvus and a few rudimentary arms. 

Din didn’t want to get his hopes up too much, the likelihood of never actually seeing that money was high and who knows what could happen on the job. But a small part of him in the back of his mind started putting together plans of what he could do when he had the money.

A hundred thousand credits. He could do so much, even buy something for the kid. 

The kid. He wasn’t with Din anymore, he was with the Jedi. He couldn’t get anything for them. 

“Kena, The Togruta, gave me some information about our target, a last known location and some known associates but we have no way of finding out who those associates are. We’re going to have to use that location to see what we can get... Mando? Mando.” The man was standing in front of him, hands lifting to fix the scarf around his face. 

They were shorter than him, he noticed. An odd thing to focus on but there wasn’t much room to think outside the sinking feeling of despair that was taking up most of his thought.

The man poked at the heart of his cuirass, pressing down before tapping at the metal two, three times. “I need your mind in the here and now. We can have freak-outs or existential crises once we’re on the shuttle out of here, understand?”

How they knew he was panicking, Din had no clue, but the words were enough to puncture a hole in the emotion and let it out, leaving him bereft and floating. 

“Do you hear me?”

“Loud and clear, sir.” The response was automatic, a remnant from the corps and the older brothers who had kept them in line during training. The man looked at him for a moment longer before nodding and turning to walk away again. Din fell in line behind as he had before, tucking away his blaster.

Alor would a good name for them he thought as they wandered through the packed city. It would do until they parted or Din was trusted enough to earn their name. They didn’t seem forthcoming and he knew the value of keeping a true name hidden. 

Who knew the kind of business they were tied up in, to be stranded on a pirate boat like that despite having enough money to throw a hundred thousand of it to a bounty hunter they had just met. Din didn’t want to get involved any more than he had.

They didn’t _seem_ Empire, which was probably the best he could hope for. Din didn’t care if they were some Core World tax avoider so long as they paid him at the end of the day. 

If all it took was wetwork on some Outer Rim dust ball then he would do it. He’d done worse.

Alor didn’t look back as they strode forward, the people around them parting like they had in the den. Din kept close to their shadow, Staring over their head at the path ahead and seeing people react to his presence almost in real-time. The way their emotions melted off of their faces to be replaced by apprehension and fear.

Yet, despite it all, Alor just kept going, ignoring them all with a singleminded determination that reminded Din of the tribe. A bullheadedness that he had only seen in other Mandalorians.

It pained him, to be with someone so familiar yet knowing that they were just a stranger. One with a passing resemblance to the tribe. Was he just lonely? Looking for Mandalorians in every person he saw?

Stars, he missed his kid.

.. 

Fortunately, the lead that the Togruta gave Alor managed to give them some sense of where they could look for the target. They were in a derelict warehouse, locals pointing them in its direction with some light questioning.

Once inside, they only needed to wave around their weapons - Din’s spear being very ominous in the low light - before they started blabbering, locations, known schedule and the retinue of bodyguards the target had.

Another warehouse. It seemed they were dealing with some low-level gang that were encroaching on another’s territory. Not that Din cared, it was unlikely that Alor did either. They were just here for the credits.

“You can’t access your credits here?” He had asked on their way to the first warehouse. Mainly to distract himself from the pain but also to question the supposed large amount of credits Alor had to pay him with.

“They dont deal near Hutt space,” They being the IGBC. No one dealt near Hutt space apart from the Hutts, slavers and particularly stupid people. “You’ll get your credits, don’t worry.”

“We will see.” 

“I know better than to cross a Mandalorian.” It was low, murmured under his breath but Din still caught it. There was emotion there, the context of which Din was not privy of.

He pondered it as they approached the second warehouse. Although he was more focused on making sure that he wouldn’t be caught off guard when the job went wrong it was still something that cropped up as they were met with blaster fire upon entering the building.

Nothing that he hadn’t expected.

Ducked behind a pile of crates, Alor spoke up quietly, withdrawing his twin westars. “You know, we probably should have gotten better weapons before storming a building armed with sidearms and probably compromised intel.”

“You think?”

Alor looked over to him, a gleam in their eyes. “We can take them, I’ll just need you to cover for me. Your beskar will protect you more than what I have.”

Din peeked over the edge of his crate, flicking on thermal view and scanning over the forms quickly before ducking back down. 

“Twenty, maybe, could be less or more.”

“I like those odds,” Alor shifted their legs a little, pistols gleaming silver in the dim light. “Ready?”

“As much as I can be.”

“Good… Move, now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alor - Sir, also could be interpreted as Leader, chief or boss.


End file.
